Twin Peaks, Season One: Episode Two
Random Thoughts:
1) The Horne Brothers. The Brie and Butter Sandwich. That whole opening scene. Demented genius. David Patrick Kelly! Where've you been, man? ...Probably wearing a gorilla outfit in a Richard Foreman play.
2) Our introduction to "Invitation To Love" arrives in this episode, even if we don't actually see any of the show itself.
3) One-Eyed Jacks manages the feat of being completely and utterly implausible, yet perfectly logical within the context of this series. A log cabin brothel wiith a large number of elaborately-costumed ladies of the evening....that apparently sit around waiting for Benjamin Horne to show up? Sure. Why not? Serves to add whole new levels of sleaze to the town's atmosphere and to the characters of the Horne Bros.
4) Audrey's Diner Dance (thank you, Sherilyn Fenn) cements my theory from episode one as fact: Those crazy teenagers love their spooky/sexy Jazz music. I imagine there being a whole alternate universe of beret-wearing, upright bass playing, Le Jazz Hot purveying musicians catering to the Audreys of Lynch's Alternate-Earth, and I love that.
5) In Twin Peaks no one, including the grownups, listens to anything resembling contemporary music. Leland's dance to Pennsylvania 6-5000 is a grostequerie of grief - simultaneously heart-rending and wince-inducing. The sight of him "dancing" with Laura's picture is a potent reminder of how important Lynch's personal vision is to this series. I don't think it's a coincidence that he directed this episode. Episode one was helmed by someone else and, while good, has a flat quality in comparison to both the pilot and this episode.
6) Do we ever learn the name of Bobby's lunk-head friend? The one that sort of looks like Anthony Rapp in Adventures In Babysitting? If we've already heard it, it hasn't stuck in my head. Their scene with Leo has a proto-Blair Witch feeling to it (the shots of the camera moving through the trees eerily capture the sensation of being deep in the woods late at night) and introduces yet another element I don't remember: The shadowy figure observing Bobby, Leo and (Insert Name Here) from behind a tree. Way to consistently creep me out during this episode, Lynch.
7) Maybe Nadine and her eye patch get annoying later on, but the end of her Quest For The Perfect, Silent, Draperunners was laugh-out-loud funny.
8) Had another one of those TV Deja Vu moments with Cooper's Tibetan deductive technique. I can remember exactly where I was the first time I watched that scene. And speaking of that scene: it's a corker, isn't it? From the way the Sherriff's Dept. all leans forward in their seats at the start of Coop's lecture, to the confusion over whether to put a check next to "the Jack with one eye," to Andy getting beaned in the head with an errant stone, this remains a marvelously off-kilter piece of acting and writing.
9) The Dream (or: David Lynch is channeling the devil)
At the end of a perfectly enjoyable episode, Cooper slides into bed at the Great Northern, settles in for a good night's rest, and promptly falls down a hellishly bizarre rabbit hole, dragging us along.
I'm completely unclear on the mythology of Bob and the one-armed man, but its weird, working-class mysticism ("we lived above...I think you call it...a convenience store") adds to the sense of unease. Bob lived above a convenience store? So.....*spoiler* he's human? I thought he was a demon/spirit/boogeyman? Maybe he is now, but used to be human?*end spoiler* I like the suggestion that one-arm was just as vicious as Bob, but that there was some kind of conversion experience, leaving him to self-mutilate and rid himself of evil's influence. It's all very brief, which tends to add a lot more atmosphere than spelling things out.
And there's a LOT of atmosphere in this sequence. We cut from one-arm's eerie exposition to shots of The Dwarf shaking horribly with his back turned to the audience (that may be one of the more disturbingly nightmarish shots I've seen Lynch produce) and an aged Cooper in a Red Room. While I'm assuming that a lot of what the dwarf says to Coop is utter nonsense ("she's my sister"), it's effectively bizarre and unnerving nonsense. Unlike the brief Bob appearances we've had so far (only Lynch and Frank Silva could make the line "I'm going to catch you in my death bag" sound like the worst fate in the world) the Little Man's first appearance isn't as much creepy/scary (barring that first, back-to-the-camera seizure shot) as it is surreal and off-putting.
Given that the episode ends with the Little Man dancing a slow groove to Audrey's prior Jukebox pick, and that the mood of the dance isn't so much creepy as unexplainably hilarious, I think it's safe to say that it feels as though Lynch is deliberately screwing with us at the end here. Here's a statement I'm utterly confident in making: At the time of this episode's airing, all over America, people turned to one another with enormous "what-the-fuck-just-happened" looks on their faces. I literally cannot believe that a major television network aired this. Was it ABC? CBS? NBC? I don't remember. What matters is, whoever greenlit this show has the sort of testicles ordinarily found on pachyderms.
All in all, a fantastic episode.
